Home Again

For the second time in two weeks or so I am going home, back to dear old Manistee, Michigan. I am spending Easter with my family after 10 years or more of celebrating it on my own, wherever I happened to be. Of course, this isn't just a family trip. I wish it was. Instead, on Good Friday, when I should be contemplating the Passion of Christ or at the very least enjoying generous helpings of shrimp salad, I will be locked in the Manistee County Historical Museum trying to recreate months of research in 8 hours. Ah, the joys of historical work.

In any case, I am more bittersweet about this trip. I love my family. They are really good people. Quirky, but good. My mother and I are like sisters...we giggle and laugh like school girls even though there's 32 years between us. I can talk about just about anything with her. There aren't many people who can say that about they're mothers. She's pretty hip for a 60 year old. Not many kids can taut that they're mothers listen to Aerosmith, Metallica, Wallflowers, and Eric Clapton, among others.

My dad and I are kindred spirits. He's obsessive about things, as am I. He's the king of procrastination (there is a reason why our front door handle hasn't worked in 12 years). I try hard (or rather don't try hard at all) to be just like him :-) He's a history buff with an intense need to know details about everything. He'll pick your brain for hours if you let him. He drives me crazy, and I love him for it. He is knowledgeable about the world in ways that I could only dream, and though he drives me crazy with is long lectures about various topics, I listen in the hopes of becoming half the person he is.

Then there's my brother. He's 5 years older than me and always my silent protector. We couldn't be more different though. I am a bookworm who still loves school (despite my protesting toward the end of each semester). He is a car nut who can't stand the thought of formal education. Where I can write a paper about a particular historical topic, sing a song in a bar, or edit just about anything, he can build cars, rewire a house, or upholster just about anything. How much more different can you get? He can't understand why I would want to live in a big city and I can't understand why he wouldn't. We don't fight though, never have, but we don't talk. We're strangers in a lot of ways, and I know that my life in Chicago is the reason for the distance both actual and figurative. As brother and sister, we share the common bond of being adopted, of having low self-esteem sometimes, and of being too sensitive for our own goods. We don't bond per se, but our respect and love for one another is there, if silenty kept. I don't tell him nearly enough, I am deeply proud him and what he's done with his life. I guess I hope he knows it.

And finally, my grandmother. She's 87 and as difficult as they come. She's kind, warm, and loving. She's also childish, manipulative, and slowly driving my mother crazy. I love her still, despite the goofiness she puts us all through. I know that when she is gone I will miss her terribly. She's my last link to the "Greatest Generation." When I can get her off the subject of her health problems and what her neighbors have been doing, she tells great stories about growing up in the Depression, dating my grandfather, moving to New York when he enlisted in the army, working in a shoe factory, and raising my mother, hellraiser that she was. We've discovered some of the stories aren't true, but the reality of who she is hasn't diminished my memories of her. She's a proud woman with a good heart. She's lived through some rough times, and I admire her longevity. I wish she was more active, more self-sufficient, but she is the embodiment of what women were supposed to be in her generation. I can't really argue with that. I just love her in spite of it.

I have a wonderful family, so why you might ask am I bittersweet about seeing them? There's so much going on in my head that I need to tell them, so many feelings that I need to sort out. But I have no idea where to begin in relating it all to them, so I end up telling them nothing. This weekend I will smile and tell them everything's OK when it's not. I will tell them that I'm happy when I'm not. Not because I enjoying lying to them, but because I feel like I have to. I don't know why. I wish I did.